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Most families will be very happy and cannot wait longer for the breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. They are the time the family members can gather and share laugh and happiness. Sometimes good weekend ideas appear during meal time. Unfortunately, this happiness may turn to disaster when there is a toddler or child in a family who doesn’t really like the menu served although the dishes are considered as healthy food. This can be problem if she continues dislike the healthier ones and want to get the unhealthy. If this is your current situation, you are not alone. There are a lot of toddlers, children, teens, and even the adults who are considered as the picky eaters. Look at your big family and you will find the picky eaters easily.

In handling picky eater child, you need to know the sources or reasons why she becomes like that. In many cases, avoiding certain foods happens because the children take too much snacks or drinks before the meal time. It means they are not hungry due to the snacks. So, look at the snacking time you are applied to your child. A bottle of chocolate milk just half an hour before dinner will make your child refuse to clean the plate. If you insist to ask her clean her plate, it means you are educating your children to overeating. Of course, this is not good. The important point in introducing good eating habit is making sure that your child is able to feel what it is called as hungry and full. Therefore, you should avoid giving any snacks or drink too much before the meal time.

Another reason why your child becomes the picky eater is difficulty in chewing certain kinds of food. When she was about nine months, she started to eat textured food. However, the process sometimes fails, so that when she was fifteen months she kept eating smooth textured porridge. This situation will affect the following years to come. She does not like textured food because she feels difficult to chew. Vegetables like broccoli, carrot, cauliflower, and asparagus are not considered as the soft ones. So, your child will choose the soft vegetables like spinach and lettuce. She may not eat bacon and beef steak also although they are cooked done. But beef burger may be consumed because it is softer. By knowing the reasons, you will able to choose the treatment for your picky eater child.

Once you and your couple decide to start the toilet training, both of you have to be consistent in many things. Consistency is needed to make your child accustom with the new activities. The facts you have to know is your child does not know about timing. She only knows day and night. Day is for playing and night is for sleeping. So, start by taking her to the toilet just after she gets up in the morning. Ask her to feel the signs of pee and bowel movement. If she doesn’t feel or know any signs, it is fine, even when she doesn’t pee or poop, you do not have to be panic. Do this every day, until she knows that going toilet should be done in the morning after she gets up.

However, you do not be sad or worry when she does not show any improvement for about two or three months. Toilet training takes time. In certain cases, the training can last about two years when the children are two until four years old. Many times, parents get panic and frustrated because the children do not want to follow the instruction and keep poop in the diaper or panty. The frustration is added by the fact that parents have to clean the dirt in many places. Indeed, this is quite tiring. In this situation, your child is not aware yet about their body function. The potty training you have just started is done to help your child recognize the signs and they know when they have to go to the toilet on her own.

Keep being consistent although sometimes your child rejects to go to the toilet. Take a deep breath and say something calmly and believe that the efforts will result something positive. Your child is able and want to go to the toilet herself and you do not have to spend more money for the disposable diaper, cleaner, wipes, and cream. Spend your money for purchasing cloth pants with cute cartoon characters that your child likes. Go straight to make your child wear the cloth pants and remove the diapers from your child sight. This will help the child to forget about the needs of diaper and start to understand that she needs cloth pants.

As the part of the children milestone, toilet training is the same important compared to the walking and speaking training. As a parent, you must know the signs and steps your child should follow, so that there will be no failure. Unfortunately, a lot of parents have to struggle during the period. They say toilet training is the most difficult time they have. Actually they are wrong. It is their children who feel confused and frustrated during the training. Children do not know why they have to go to the toilet. They also do not understand about the schedule and they got frustrated because you keep asking them to follow what you said. Furthermore, if you get angry or lose your patience, your children are the ones who will suffer more than you.

You have to know that mostly parents are source and the ones who have to responsible to the toilet training failure. First, some parents are lazy to notice the signs that their children are ready for the training. They are too busy with other activities so that they believe that diaper is better. Moreover, some other parents even think that toilet training is not necessary because their children will understand the needs to go to the toilet themselves. No training is needed. Well, it is completely a big mistake to think that way. Your laziness to change the diaper and change the diaper habit to toilet habit will affect your children negatively in the following years. When your child is going to school, none of her friend is wearing diaper to school even the kindergarten students. Every student can use toilet well.

Lack of knowledge is also the source of failure in toilet training. This will be so bad because once you get pregnant, you have to search and learn about caring, raising, and training the baby. Many times, lots of parents do not know what to do and act when the child gives the signs of bowel movement. Even when they know, they have no knowledge about guiding and tend to be angry when the child does not follow the instruction. Once the child start to cry, parents will judge her as spoiled, naughty, and the worst, stupid girl. All of them are considered as big mistake in parenting the children. All children are smart and clever. It is just parents who need to learn and keep gathering parenting knowledge to raise their children.

When your toddler is about 20 months, she is ready to have regular potty training. Actually the time to start is not the same in each toddler. So, you may notice the signs and ready to start. Before starting you need prepare yourself emotionally and physically because there is a chance that the things will not run smoothly as you have predicted before. There must be a kind of resistance at the beginning of the training. In your side, your toddler’s potty training is a kind of test of your patience. You need to be ready to clean up the mess, the wet, and the smell due to the training. In certain cases, the resistance may last for a year or more and the toddlers are throwing tantrums during the training.

Actually, you can smoothen the potty training by talking calmly to your toddler. Explain the steps one by one and give one reasons why she needs to go to the toilet. Give example that her cousins or friends, and other people also go to the toilet every day. She may not completely understand your explanation but do not give up easily. At least you have tried to take her to the toilet. However, you are not allowed to push her. You need to try and try again when there is retention. What happened many times is the more pressure given, the more your toddler reject going to the toilet. So, you may put cute plastic toys or decorate the toilet to make your toddler feel comfortable.

You can provide colorful tools that can attract your toddler to use. Or you can create simple game and reward your toddler after she does the training. Do not forget to create schedule. This may remind you the time to take your toddler to the restroom. The cute schedule may be put on the wall and let her to look at it. This can also remind her about the training. When the time comes, remove the items that can distract you and your toddler attention. Once there is a distraction, it will be difficult to restart. Be patience in guiding your toddler to make sure the success in her potty training.

One of the milestones that your toddler has to face is potty training. She needs to learn the way to reduce the use of diapers and start to go to the toilet. For certain parents, there is no difficulty at all. Once they see that their toddlers give the signs to go to the toilet like the adults, they start the process. But not all parents recognize the signs, so that some of them start the potty training earlier, while the others come late. This makes many parents confused. The reason is there is no specific sign on each toddler. This can make you confused also because starting earlier means you push your toddler to do something that she is not ready yet. On the other hand, starting too late means you let your toddler to feel comfortable with the diapers.

Surely, both of them are not good for your toddler and you are the one who is able to notice whether she is ready or not to start the training. The first thing you need to notice is that potty training can be started when she is about 18 to 20 months. This is not the exact time actually, but commonly parents have difficulties in training the 15 months toddler. Look at the diaper and notice whether it is still dry for certain time or not. No liquid means that she is able to handle the feeling longer. Or, she feels uncomfortable when the diaper is a little bit wet. In this age, your toddler has been able to give sign when there is bowel movement. She may tell you something or act or show you something happen on the bowel.

When she is able to ask to have the diaper changed with the dry one, you should directly thing this as a good sign. Again, she feels uncomfortable. After noticing the signs, you should know whether she can put on and off the diaper herself. This can be the final signal when she is ready to go to the toilet. Or you may train her to put on and off the diaper as the starting point before going to the toilet. This process may take a little bit longer and needs your patience. Potty training can last about 6 months but in certain cases, it may take two years to complete the training. Watch the signs and start the training!